TV chef Jeroen Meus has eye on international exposure

4th March 2013, 0 comments

On Saturday night an emotional Jeroen Meus, the undisputed favourite among foodies in Flanders, received a television star award for his television cooking programme ‘Daily food’. But Meus, who sells half a million cookery books each year, is not only loved in his home country. He has claimed considerable interest abroad and did extremely well during the Paris Cookbook Fair. “Jeroen can secure impressive figures,” says publisher André Van Halewyck. “A chef who sells half a million books to a market with five million readers is quite something. Edouard Cointreau, organizer of the prestigious Paris fair and well-known cookery book guru, also loosened his purse strings, sending a mail to his address book to advertise the Flemish wonder boy’s act. This promotional trick paid off. “There has been interest from various countries,” says Van Halewyck, who met with American booking agents while in France. But Meus’s plans for international expansion are closer to home. “Our first priority is the Netherlands,” says Van Halewyck. “In autumn we plan to launch a campaign to gain a foothold in the Dutch market,” he says of his plans to initially launch the cook books based on the daily TV series and even a TV programme on a Dutch channel.